December 18, 2016
In a December 9 Washington Post opinion,
senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and representative Ron DeSantis (R-FL) stated
that they plan to introduce a constitutional amendment to limit the number of terms that
senators can serve to two terms (12 years) and three terms for
representatives (6 years). They stated that this is a way for Congress
to show it heard the voice of the people.
Cruz and DeSantis asserted that “on Election Day, the American people
made a resounding call to “drain the swamp” that is modern Washington. . . . . Thankfully,
there’s a solution available that, while stymied by the permanent
political class, enjoys broad public support: congressional term limits.
. . . . Passing term limits will demonstrate that Congress has actually
heard the voice of the people. . . . . huge majorities of rank-and-file
Republicans, Democrats and independents favor enacting this reform.
Indeed, according to a Rasmussen survey conducted in October, 74 percent
of likely voters support establishing term limits for all members of
Congress. This is because the concept of a citizen legislature is
integral to the model of our democratic republic.”
Normally,
it’s reasonable to believe that any talk of amending the US constitution
is idle chatter with essentially no chance of any amendment becoming
law. But these aren’t normal times. During the 2016 campaign, Donald
Trump called for term limits. House Speaker Paul Ryan also backs the
idea. Maybe there's more than a vanishingly small chance that this could happen. Or, maybe not.
What do term limits do?: Since term limits
have been in place in various state legislatures, it’s worth asking
what impact, if any, that has on governance. The evidence suggests that
term limits tend to have documented unintended, but presumably unwanted,
consequences that don’t obviously outweigh whatever benefits there are
to the people’s will or anything else other than beneficiaries of the
change.
Pro-term limit politicians and partisans routinely ignore those consequences, while the public is basically unaware of them.
Unintended consequences of term limited legislators include:
1. Loss of state legislator
influence to special interests, lobbyists and career bureaucrats who are
not generally accessible to elections and voters.
2. A power shift from state legislative leaders to governors, legislative staffs and unelected bureaucrats.
3.
A decrease in state legislator professionalism, e.g., because there
simply isn’t time for a legislator to become specialized and expert in a
policy area.
4. A decreased for state legislatures role in
crafting state budgets because less sophisticated short term legislators
are outmaneuvered by more experienced executive branches.
5.
Less legislative innovation as evidenced by (i) a reduced capacity to
take advantage of flexibility in federal program guidelines, and (ii) a
lower rate of innovation awards from the Council of State Governments.
6. A failure
to fill legislatures with citizen legislators, while experienced
professional politicians are replaced with less experienced professional
politicians who are climbing their career ladders.
As discussed before, democracy doesn’t work the way voters
generally believe it does and/or should. According to the research
data, unintended consequences of term limits on legislatures is another
disconnect between voter ideals and reality.
Questions: Is there any reasonable chance
that a constitutional amendment on term limits for congress (or anything
else) might become law under current political conditions? If the effects
of term limits found by political science research are true and apply to members of congress, is pushing for term limits desirable or
not? Is the research data on the effects of term limits on legislatures
credible or not? Is the concept of a citizen legislature is integral to
your model of our democratic republic as Cruz and DeSantis argue?
Pragmatic politics focused on the public interest for those uncomfortable with America's two-party system and its way of doing politics. Considering the interface of politics with psychology, cognitive science, social behavior, morality and history.
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